Saturday, March 28, 2015

ENSO Arctic; To cloud and cool or To clear and melt?

~All time low extent maxima may be twinned with perfect melt conditions likely for a little while.  

    We go back to 2010 the X-warmest year in history,  with El-Nino during 2009-10 winter favoring more Polar clouds,   perfect for making thinner sea ice during darkness,  not so good for the melting sea ice during summer.   2010 was interesting,  because La Nina was full blown on December 2010.  This further  delayed a major melting season till 2012.    2010 had almost a perfect mix,  El-Nino during winter and La-Nina hitting in spring would have made 2010 the greatest melting ever.  However La-Nina lagged by a few months.   Now lets compare ENSO's :

     March 2010, the remnants of El-Nino cast a cloudy shadow over the Arctic.  it was a very warm winter with sunsets in spring seen with rounder sun disks.


   The difference is unmistakable,  March 25 2010 (left) had a much rounder sun disk (wetter by moisture signaled redness) at the same astronomical elevation on the same date of 2015.   The right sun disk is heavily miraged,  it has twice less vertical sun disk but is more like Dr Andy Young's  Mock Mirage,  2 suns with the top one cut off.    Warmer Arctic atmospheres tend to cause less optical refraction.

     March 16 2015 has a warmer North Pacific but colder South Pacific,  similar to 2010,
but 2010 had a modest El-Nino over the winter. However, the trend is and was La-Nina'ish until very recently.    With North Pacific clouds nowhere as strong to seed the stratosphere as much as equatorial Cumulo Nimbus.

We see this seeding in the High Arctic another way:

   Basically the latest La-Nina trend created less cloud seeds (march 27 2015 above), we can hardly see any black cloud streaks (PSC's or Polar Tropopausic Clouds).  During an El-Nino,  a greater number of cloud seeds scatter world wide,  and come down in the High Arctic increasing cloud albedo,  therefore El-Nino cools the Arctic in Spring-Summer or warms the Arctic in late Autumn-Winter,  La-Nina does exactly the opposite.       There has been very good hypothesis of possible massive El-Nino forming as by CSU's Phil Klotzbach relayed by  Dr Masters.


   These higher than Cirrus clouds show up very well during twilight,   the more El-Nino is warm the more we see.   There is here double the streaks on this March 6 2010 shot of the same sky as on the preceding  photo right above.

    Prognosis from this data:

     There are other sources of information that I will publish later,  for now it looks like
there will be a sun driven earlier melt for Arctic Sea ice.  But it will be stopped
by extra clouds come about July.   Not quite ideal for a massive melt.  But other observations are forthcoming,  there is not enough compiled factors which will help decide the crucial circulation patterns to come.   I have a few more weeks of observing to do before making my yearly summer-fall-winter projection.  WD March 28,2015